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Street Children (Congo)

It is a delight to follow the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr. Brown). As he said, we visited the DRC recently. It has about the same population as the UK, although it is the size of western Europe. Throughout the major cities the national street population could be more than 60,000—that is an estimate as we cannot be completely accurate—which is 0.1 per cent. of the entire population. That does not include tens of thousands of children made homeless by displacement because of the continuing conflict in the east. Some 50 per cent. of the republic’s population are children and 47 per cent. are under 14. As one walks around Kinshasa, as we did, it is extraordinary to see the sheer youth of the population—the impression is overwhelming. One hardly ever sees old people, and I was pretty well the oldest person that I came across during the entire week that we spent there, which is rather strange for someone from this country. I assume that the difficulty of living is such that all the old people are dead—not to put too fine a point on it. Some of the children on the streets were born there, and there is now a second generation of children living on the streets. On our visits, we regularly saw very young women—teenagers—with infants on the streets. This is therefore a crisis of staggering proportions, in what is the poorest country in the world. My colleague, the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway, explained why so many children end up on the streets, but the problem is made far worse by the system of organised kleptocracy initiated by Mr. Mobutu. We talked to several politicians, who, in my view, are a sorry lot of people. They were the only people who appeared to have any sort of carpets, computers or anything in their offices. The senior civil servants that we talked to—the equivalent of permanent secretaries in our system—had nothing. We talked to one who literally lived in a bare office, with no salary, no computer and with just a coat hanger on the wall. He was clearly doing a wonderful job with absolutely no resources. Of course, we were treated politely by politicians, as I would hope, given that this country is one of the DRC’s main bilateral funders. When it came to it, most of the politicians that we met were honest enough to admit that, before the elections, they had been concerned that the fetish pastors had too much political power to be dealt with. When one goes around Kinshasa, it is staggering to see the sheer volume of new churches that are going up, and the politicians do not have the political will to deal with that growing number of churches. In theory, churches are supposed to be registered, and the constitution absolutely forbids people from dealing with children as though they were witches. As I said, however, the politicians ignore the street child problem. I should say that there is absolutely no evidence that the mainstream Churches, both Catholic and Protestant, are involved in these practices, and many of the new evangelical Churches do a good job. However, there is a relatively small number of fetish pastors who make a living by denouncing children as witches. It is an extraordinary situation. People in extended families are under such economic pressure that they simply cannot cope with another child. That child’s parents might have died from AIDS or other causes, but the pastor is brought in and literally accuses the child there and then of being a witch. Sometimes the child is tortured and, more often than not, they are thrown out on to the streets. This is therefore a real problem, and I was staggered by it. People in this country joke a bit about witches and do not take the issue entirely seriously. We thought of writing to J.K. Rowling, who has made a lot of money talking about witchcraft. Perhaps she could donate a bit of money to deal with a situation in which witchcraft is a serious problem and in which tens of thousands of children suffer as a result of being accused of being witches. It is common for governors to round up and incarcerate children regularly; indeed, the policy is popular with the general population because many street children are unpopular with them. During one round-up, the police beat a boy called Kondikor, from the Delveaux area of Kinshasa, on the head with an iron bar and then the butt of a gun, before leaving him to die in the street. We met the governor of Kinshasa. I have never seen a man with so many mobile phones in his office—apparently, he needs at least one to contact his various girlfriends. He was one of the few people we met who had any kind of affluence about his person, but he has now been removed by a military governor, thank God. He was a very warm personality and claimed that he was a personal friend of the street children. He said that he had found a number of jobs for them, including 700 jobs as street cleaners. We thought that that was an interesting initiative, so we went on to the streets to talk to some of those street cleaners. As it happened, some of those jobs had been created—with western aid, it must be said—but they had all gone to the families of existing street cleaners, not the street children. So much for the efforts of the governor of Kinshasa. As the DRC takes its first faltering steps towards democracy, street children are becoming more vulnerable. Democracy à la DRC sees politicians mobilise large groups of street children for their political rallies. That leads the children back into confrontation with the law, resulting in beatings, incarceration and further abuse. The politicians then blame the children, thereby reinforcing negative popular opinion, and the whole thing goes around in a circle. In the meantime, many of these children are held in detention without trial. Incidentally, I should say that although we call them children all the time, and a lot of children are involved, there are also a lot of young men, and we met men in their early 20s who had never had a home. Contrary to the advice of the Foreign Office, we went out in the evening and walked around the city. It is perfectly safe, and there was no fear that one was threatened in any way. We talked to a number of street children, and here are some of their testimonies. Philippe is 14 and was accused of sorcery, which is why he was forced out of his family and on to the streets three years ago. He collects leaves, which he sells on to people who use them for mulch and composting as part of their subsistence farming practices in Kinshasa. Incidentally, there is no public park in the city; if there were, it would immediately be reduced to allotments, such is the poverty. However, there is one park in the middle of Kinshasa—it is run by Lebanese as a private golf course. I have never seen a private golf course in the middle of a capital city. The monthly subscription is $400. Imagine that! That $400 would pay for a child’s education for a whole year. Philippe augmented his income by helping to push carts around the city, transporting goods for local business people. We saw his home: he sleeps by the stadium in a large pipe near a pile of excreta on the muddy ground. The police come round two or three nights a week and extort what little money he earns, and he and his friends are regularly beaten. He told us of another boy, Joel, who was 10 years old. He was selling leaves to some policemen, but they refused to pay, so he complained. They beat him so badly that after they had pushed him into a drainage ditch, he did not have the strength to pull himself out and drowned. We then talked to P.Y. from Delveaux. He hobbled into a filthy bar where we were meeting some young adults and older children. This young man had been attacked by police, who were trying to take his miserable, hard-earned pennies from him. As he fled, he tripped up. One of the policemen took a machete and chopped him in the knee. The wound had been dressed by a Catholic priest just before we met the boy, who was clearly in a lot of pain. None the less, he felt that he had been very lucky. Lucky? Being mugged by policemen and having one’s knee sliced with a machete is lucky? These children live in a world that we can barely comprehend. However, there is hope, which is why we are here today. The United Kingdom is the DRC’s largest European Union bilateral funder, so we have some influence. As my colleague the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway said, we have the traction and leverage to influence the DRC Government. We can also influence individual politicians, although they are largely at fault in this, and senior civil servants—the ones we met were a hard-working and honest lot of people. We can encourage them to address impunity, corruption, exploitation and the abuse of the most marginalised people—particularly children. As the DRC takes faltering steps towards democracy, it is important that the British Government use their influence to help those outside the democratic process. The children and young people that we are discussing are not involved in that process, except as spear carriers—often literally—at political rallies. We must be ever mindful of value for money. We are talking about our taxpayers’ money and we must make sure that it has an effect. We met the ambassador, Andy Sparkes, who I thought was very impressive. He gave us his time generously and I pay tribute to him. He is a man who cares about what is happening in the country and I want to quote what he told us:"““Accusations of sorcery are a convenient excuse for a particularly cruel way of dealing with poverty, and religion is used as its pretext. Cruelty like this should be punished, regardless of whether it is executed in the name of religion or not.""It is not natural for Congolese to behave in this way. It is a recent phenomenon. The consequences of war and the subsequent massive aggravation of poverty is being exploited by a small number of pastors from private, revivalist churches who use vulnerable children as a platform upon which to exploit families that are struggling to feed themselves. And they will charge them to do this!””" Indeed, it is not natural for Congolese people to engage in the practice of accusations of witchcraft. It is a relatively new phenomenon and if there were real political will—it is against the law—and if the western powers were to use their influence and, of course, take greater steps towards dealing with poverty, I am sure that, eventually, we could get a grip on it. The hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway has already dealt with some of the recommendations, and I want to emphasise them, as we have the Secretary of State with us today. I am delighted that he chose to come here himself, rather than sending a junior Minister. That shows the importance that he attaches to the problem and the all-party group is very pleased to see him here. We think that the main thing is to address the problem of impunity and corruption. With that in mind, we believe that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s bilateral fund should be used to invest in tactical, high-focus, high-impact but reasonably inexpensive projects. I was very impressed by the work of War Child and some other charities in dealing with the problem on a micro level and creating small funds of perhaps a couple of hundred dollars, and not just giving them to a child or young person but training them. One of the children whom we heard about set up a new business with the help of that $200 and got himself off the streets by setting up a television set in his village, as a kind of local cinema. Television sets are still relatively rare, and he was making a living in that way. The other vital thing—this is where the Foreign and Commonwealth Office can help—is to help with the training of, and payment of salaries to, a small number of magistrates dealing with juvenile justice matters. There is no law in the country. No one is paid. The police, the army, magistrates and judges are not paid, so they must be corrupt just to survive. Therefore there is no justice. If there is an accusation against a pastor concerning witchcraft and it comes before a magistrate it will be thrown out, because the pastor will simply bribe the magistrate. In a way the magistrate is not a wicked person; no one is wicked in that situation. We can imagine what would happen if none of us were paid—none of our police or soldiers, none of our civil servants or the Clerks of the House; we would all have to be corrupt to survive. The Department can help with this, and try to make things better. I suggest the establishment of a legal aid fund to tackle targeted cases and the promotion of those cases across the media as high-profile wins. It was made clear to us that there have been virtually no prosecutions. I do not think that there have been any successful prosecutions—or perhaps there has been one in the entire country—of pastors who accuse children of being witches. If we had a few high-profile wins and could create a small corps of magistrates prepared to deal with the matter in a proper way, we might get the notion established in people’s mind that it is a criminal offence and that people will be punished for it. Then we could perhaps help with the training of specialised police units that could deal specifically with street children. Such projects could be combined with the provision of awareness training projects for fetish pastors. We went to a training project for fetish pastors with Save the Children, which does a wonderful job. We talked to a former fetish pastor who was now a mainstream evangelical pastor doing a perfectly good job and who freely admitted that what he had done in the past was wrong. He had undergone training with Save the Children and seen the error of his ways. We saw him sitting down with other pastors, trying to convince them that theirs was not the way forward. As we have so much influence, as a large donor, can we not use it to agree sanctions with other EU heads of mission against local top politicians—especially governors? They are involved—and there is ample proof of this—in the arbitrary arrest, beating and death of street children. Those politicians are very sensitive to sanctions by the EU. By the way, they are also very angry with us and with the EU because they complain all the time that we give money direct to the people and not to the Government. I think that it is an extremely good thing that we do, and I congratulate the Government on it. It was a searing experience to walk around Kinshasa. The country has obviously been utterly ruined. It is now at the bottom of the world heap. I pay tribute to the personal commitment of the Secretary of State and I look forward to hearing what he will tell us today about attempts to improve the situation, even in a small way. Even if he saves only a few hundred street children from an appalling fate the whole House will, I think, be very grateful to him.